


Safety of Our Own Making

by Lyssandra_Med



Series: One-Shot [74]
Category: Alien Quadrilogy (Movies), Alien: Resurrection (1997)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dominant Ripley, F/F, Mild Smut, Monstrous Ripley, Smut, seriously there just aren't, unedited, written because there are NOT enough fics with this pairing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:55:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27109093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyssandra_Med/pseuds/Lyssandra_Med
Summary: She compartmentalizes as the days go on. The experiences are pushed to the back of her mind, sitting somewhere whereItnow lives.Itseethes with rage at her situation and begs her to lash out, to escape, to find family and a nest, somewhere safe amid this mechanical Hell.It desires something like revenge.She knows she’ll get it at some point, eventually, all she has to do is wait.
Relationships: Annalee Call/Ellen Ripley
Series: One-Shot [74]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1429282
Comments: 4
Kudos: 35





	Safety of Our Own Making

**Author's Note:**

> unedited.  
> There are so few fics with this pairing and I hope to write more for it. I'm abandoning parts of canon, just didn't fit with what I wanted for this oneshot  
> Hope you enjoy

There is something monumentally _wrong_ inside of her, and she compartmentalizes it as best she can. The shock - _and the horror, and all the other innumerable little things, unspeakable and_ ** _broken_ ** \- at her situation, at the horrifying reality of it, is dry. It’s a rasp against hard skin, skin too dry, skin that sloughs off of her in chunks to reveal something stronger underneath.

It looks like skin.

She _hopes_ it remains skin.

She compartmentalizes that too. The experience - _and the gratifying feeling of it all coming apart, too tight clothing shed for something that allows her to_ ** _breathe_ ** \- is pushed to the back of her mind, sitting somewhere where _It_ now lives. _It_ seethes with rage at her situation and begs her to lash out, to escape, to find _family_ and a _nest,_ somewhere safe amid this mechanical Hell.

 _It_ desires something like revenge.

She knows she’ll get it at some point, eventually, all she has to do is _wait._

She knows they cannot be controlled at all, they cannot be _stopped._ They’ll simply bide their time as best they can until the moment comes. Until they finally _do_ manage to escape, she’s stuck.

There are better things for her to turn her attention on than simple hate, or rage. She can nurture those emotions, hold them close and feed the flames, but for the most part she decides to ignore them. There’s no reason for her to turn narrowminded, she can continue on this way for now.

She’s _continued on_ before this, faced odds that were much worse than what she’s been given. At least in here, in this cage, she isn’t hunted. She’s probed and studied, picked at as if she were a mute child, but she is left healthy and whole.

They wanted to know why she was so different from the last, different from _them._

To her, the answer is simple.

Something went wrong. Something went right. Something was spliced, something was exchanged.

She looks human on the outside, all except the slight stretch to her limbs, the few extra inches she has on the woman she once was. The claws on her hands are another tipoff that something is wrong - _each of them dark, sharp, her toes gifted the same and each of them stronger than titanium, so shiny they reflect the dim light from the overhead bulbs_ \- and the acid blood confirms it. It is red - _she’d stared as they used a buzzing saw to cut into her skin, considerable effort expended on behalf of the lab tech and a frightened squeal when the rotating disc launched something so low in pH that it ate through his goggles, into his eyes, deep into his skull and brain matter_ \- and it keeps her alive, but it is different. Even her own claws cannot penetrate her skin, and she knows deep down that few living things could ever puncture it.

The neighbour in the cell next over might be able to, but she doesn’t want to try that.

She can’t see what the Queen is doing, or what she wants, but she can _hear_ the Queen screaming in disgust, in rage, in anger and overwhelming _pain._ Maybe when the specimen was older it would show signs of disturbance, something wrong that the scientists could pin on her. Until then she could merely listen to its cries and wonder why her own chest swelled with emotion whenever they turned to _hurt._

Maybe she’d never live to see the outside of this cell, the hallways surrounding the medical facility.

If she did she’d call herself lucky, but until then she’d merely survive.

The days passed.

The screams grew louder.

\---

When the brood first reached out to her, it was light.

It was a lone feather against her skin - _and no matter how different she was, no matter how far removed she was from the comfort of something so faint as a simple feather, she remembered the feeling, she remembered past lovers caressing her sides, her chest, their fingers warm and their lips wet, curves heated and slit weeping_ \- and mind, something that brushed against her with the gentleness of a child asking permission.

There was no true way to cement the connection, but they tried. They wanted in, and some dark part of her mind wanted to let them. She could feel the probing growing in strength and intent, her hindbrain roaring within its cage and wanting desperately to return the call. But she couldn’t, and even if she could have, she wouldn’t. She was inextricably drawn to them, could suss out the intent of their screaming, their hissing, the anger with which they bashed against the sides of their lye filled cages. But she wanted this distance.

She wasn’t certain she’d remain herself if she gave in. The Queen was a transmitter, the drones her receivers, and in her case it seemed they wanted in on her frequency. If she’d been able to actually send a signal out, she might not have stopped.

What would that leave her as?

She didn’t know. Didn’t want to find out.

She hated the scientists for what they’d done to _Ellen,_ but she felt nothing for the woman she’d been. Nothing except vague memories, a distant longing that could never be acted upon. 

She was indifferent to what she was. Number Eight. A thing. She just _was._

That was it, and no matter the upwelling of a hiss from somewhere deep inside her throat, no matter the way she thrashed against her walls and the bars of her cage when they were in pain, she couldn’t change it. Cryo-fluid sprayed against their exoskeletons was _pain,_ there was no other description for it and they _screamed._

She screamed with them. She panted, out of breath and lightheaded.

Maybe indifference towards what she was wasn’t exactly the right direction.

They took every moment to remind her she was an experiment, and that her pain was useful to their research. They tittered with glee when the xenomorphs in the cage beside her screamed in pain, they congratulated themselves when they hurt _her,_ and listened to their anguished cries.

It took a day or two, but the indifference fled. The rage, the coursing veins of _hate_ were filling her with something light, something harsh.

She screamed, and the Queen listened. When the Queen screamed, _she_ listened.

Revelled, twisted and coming apart, rejoicing in that shared pain and the desire to reflect it.

\---

When the thin knife pressed down into her neck, she was ready.

The _thing_ atop her wasn’t human, and so the stealth it had wanted was useless. Useless when it came to inhuman things, at least. She’d have killed a human before they’d realized they were dead, but _she_ had a fighting chance against this.

A second passed before she realized it was an auton, a pretty little synth with short-cropped hair and deep eyes. The breathing gave her away, too even and repetitive to have been anything other than false. The drops of sweat falling from its - _she, or he, or they, body thin and looks so muddles that she couldn’t get a read except to say that they were_ ** _ravishing_ ** \- forehead, rolling down her nose to drip with stillness were free of those odd scents that marked humanity.

It was _odd_ how she knew that, but she refused to stop and really think about it. A quick assessment by the monster running shotgun within her mind proved it out. She could smell the difference, feel it, assess what was atop of her as _not a threat,_ despite the weapon in her hand.

That weapon pressed further, the edge too thin and finicky to actually do damage. She had the disquieting notion though that if she didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t do _something_ soon, the auton would simply begin to bash her brains in.

Maybe shove something down her throat until she’d choked.

So she spoke.

“I’m Ripley. Who’re you?”

\---

Call was nothing at all like she’d imagined, not that she’d really imagined much. Her only _real_ \- _and known_ \- experience with any autons had been Ash and Bishop, and neither were what one could really call _normal._ They were older models that had been extinguished nearly two hundred years ago, and so it stood to reason that within that time there would be updates and improvements. A new generation of autons, until they were outlawed and sought for destruction, persecuted for being _worse,_ even when that really meant _better._

Even if she’d really been ready for that, she wouldn’t have been ready for Call. She wouldn’t have expected her to be so utterly disarming without any ounce of obvious effort.

Scuttling through the vents and along empty, creaking corridors was _fun_ with the auton at her side. Call would turn away whenever they ran into human opposition - _a rapidly dwindling instance now that they were into day three of the infestation_ \- and allowed Ripley to work her magic without any comment or judgement. Her eyes were clean and clear when she turned back, reserved perhaps, but free. 

But when there was something _more_ for Ripley to fight, something with a black carapace and too many fingers, she _watched._

She would stand at the side and let Ripley handle it without any question, with no doubts that she’d succeed. She would grin as too short claws - _not so strong as her siblings, none of them harmed yet though, they either couldn’t or wouldn’t break, their tips all still just as sharp as they’d been before she’d escaped_ \- dug deep into a darkened exoskeleton to reveal yellow gristle and spitting acid. She would smile when she saw Ripley’s eyes deepen in colour, the sclera just different enough and pupils just wide enough to allow her something resembling night vision, something that spoke to bloodlust and mindless vengeance. Ripley’s body was strong and lithe, her muscles all worked in tandem when her weight shifted, when she bent forward and _hissed._

Call didn’t care that she was inhuman. If anything, she seemed interested. It didn’t matter that once Ripley finished, once the threat was gone, she would turn away and become reserved.

It didn’t matter that she seemed ashamed of her own deviance, or delight.

From one inhuman to the next, Ripley appreciated it, even when Call pulled away.

\---

There were some things that Ripley _didn’t_ appreciate. 

The looks that Call would give her when the thing inside her head _screamed_ was one of them. That little bit of her given over to a monstrous biology had been growing as the hours passed, as unlit day turned to brightly lit night. Call could sense when she was on edge, just a simple push away from eviscerating the survivors. _It_ would hiss in her ear, make her wonder at times whether it would be better to side with _them._

Call knew when those moments came, and the looks she gave Ripley were chilling in their intensity. It left her ashamed, hollow, a body composed of ashes.

Ripley would snarl and stalk off, soundly put it down. She forced herself to remember the horror of Ellen’s past lives and _tried_ to keep boiling rage in her gut from pushing the auton away. 

It didn’t seem to be working though, and all her carefully composed masks fell away when they found the failed clones.

Wren lurched from her grasp with all the energy of a frightened rabbit when they finally turned the corner. She caught a quick glimpse of seven abominations, but a quick glimpse was all she needed. The last one in the row was on a gurney, its body torn to shreds and splayed open by a xenomorph who had arrived long before them. Whatever was inside of her head, whatever lived in that dark pit at the back of her brain, it _hurt._

It cried in anguish as she looked at _herself,_ at _itself._ It _hurt._ No matter what these things were, no matter what they could have been _\- might have been, had the scientists been better at their job_ \- it _burned_ to see their anguish so clear on muddled faces, the skin discoloured and bodies hidden behind thin veils of rot and wispy liquid.

She could have been one of them.

Counting seconds only served to infuriate her further, calm breathing gave way to harsh panting, and the jostling of the crew at her back was setting her frayed nerves on edge.

What Ripley hadn’t expected at all was a short intake of breath, Call suddenly appearing in front of her with gentle hands on shaking wrists and absolution in her eyes. 

She hadn’t expected the auton to _speak._

Soft words, release, _permission_ without judgement.

Ripley sprinted away from that room while Call moved the others somewhere safer, somewhere that Ripley would find them - _by instinct_ \- when she was done.

Wren didn’t manage to make it very far. His sloppy footsteps were easy enough to follow without her heightened senses, and soon enough she had him marked. She stretched herself, leaned into her gait and gave the beast control. Her fingers were splayed out into a pointed star and she _knew_ without _knowing_ that there were others beside her, others on the hunt. Whether she was related enough to their Queen as to catch their attention, or she was strong enough that her own magnetism turned them from thoughts of the hive, she didn’t know. She didn’t care. All she _did_ know, all she _did_ care about, was that they moved beside her as the seconds ticked on, and she could _feel_ them within the walls.

They were hurting with her. Hunting with her. Incensed on her behalf and willing to _help._

Until this point, she’d fought them. It seemed the complication of shepherding humans away from their traps had been what pitted them against one another. Now though?

Now they were on her side, or at least adjacent enough that she thanked them with low hisses, warbling calls that erupted from her in low tones only _they_ could hear. A pack of invisible, nigh-invincible killers was at her side, beneath her and above her. She listened to them with glee, tittered when they called, egged one another on faster and faster. They responded to her inhuman vocalizations and the intensity rose from there.

Wren was already frightened but the calls only served to throw him into a true fright, and Ripley preyed it would influence his movements. She closed her eyes as she sped through the corridors, let her senses take over where sight no longer matter and let _It_ have a go at piloting her body. The sound, the smell, the _taste_ of Wren’s fear in the air was enough to lead her until he eventually ran out of space to run.

The elevator he made his way towards was broken, the doors blocked by debris and sparks shooting from where live wires poked through the wall. There was nowhere for him to hide, nowhere to run, nowhere to escape to as Ripley pushed forward and her brethren made their appearance.

She shifted and opened her eyes, listened to him feebly babble, pleading desperately for a life that wouldn’t be saved. He dropped to his knees and _begged_ to be spared, tears running from his eyes and body shivering. When the xenomorph to her left made as if to snatch him she snarled, angry and vicious, lunging and swiping with her claws until it got the message.

This one was _hers,_ and would remain so until she left, until she was finished. She would leave him alive just enough so they could further their own ends, and when she fell upon him it was with that imperative in mind.

She would break him, and then _they_ could have a turn.

\---

When Ripley finally returned to her own hive - _not a true one, not really, and definitely not at a nest, not her own, not until they were somewhere safe where she could curl inwards and digest everything that she had seen, everything that they’d done, everything she both was and wasn’t_ \- Call was waiting. She swayed side to side and Ripley watched her, her own stance huddled and cringing inwards, her claws pressed tightly to her skin and dried blood flaking to the ground.

And then Johner had leaned in with a sarcastic remark on his lips, and the moment broke. The tension snapped, and whatever reservations Ripley had were shredded.

It seemed to be the same for Call. She flicked Johner the finger and then leaned in, pressed her palms to Ripley’s cheeks and drew her forward, kissed her with thin lips and a wavering tongue. She was light, steady, tasting of something inauthentic but fruity.

And then they left.

\---

Christie remained in high spirits as they pushed themselves further through the ship. Vriess was carried along his back and held a flamethrower in his arms, strong hands gripping it with single-minded purpose. Christie’s jabs were barbless as the ascended, and Ripley took stock of herself whenever he moved to her side. Call had backed off after their little moment together, whether that was to give Ripley space or reflect on what she’d done was uncertain. Ripley didn’t care enough at that moment to ask.

It would matter more when they were safe and she had a space for herself. 

Christie seemed to notice the change in her mood, its subtle shifts and turns. Against type - _or at least against what Ripley had initially imagined_ \- he seemed to actually care.

Or he just cared in different ways, or cared so little that he couldn’t find it within himself to be a prick about it.

Johner was still one massive, whining body. He was all muscle and bluster, but Ripley could tolerate that. His open hostility was a mask that hid his own fears, and Ripley could - _even though she acknowledged it she still hated it_ \- ignore it. He was also the handiest in a fight, his bullets all well-aimed and positional sense top notch. If he really managed to piss her off she’d kill him later, when they were safe.

Vriess just kept quiet for the most part. Every now and again he would quip with Christie, but he ignored Ripley for better or worse. If he was pretending she didn’t exist because of what she was, or of a lack of knowing what to say, Ripley didn’t know. Didn’t care.

Purvis was just Purvis, and seemed content with cringing in pain whenever Ripley looked at him, never saying anything and never disobeying orders.

None of the individuals moving up, higher and higher, really mattered to her. None except Call, but Ripley wouldn’t admit to that.

Admitting her biases wasn’t useful here. 

Escape was what mattered.

\---

The last sprint towards the _Betty_ was a rather harrowing experience, all things considered.

The hanger-on they’d acquired fell fast. It wasn’t exactly that she’d wanted to leave Purvis behind, but as his chest began to moved and crackle, she hadn’t wanted him to scream. 

She didn’t need a dying man to reveal their presence any further, and the child he carried within his chest would be sought by the horde above them. 

He fell down and down, body crumpling at the bottom of a maintenance shaft. He moaned once or twice and then stopped, chest splitting open while the life within his chest transferred. Ripley wasn’t quite sure how she should have felt about that. She was upset that he’d been put into this situation but she’d had nothing to do with that.

She hadn’t forced the scientists to clone her, just as she hadn’t pushed the dead captain of the _Betty_ into smuggling living hosts.

It just _was._

Her sympathies would neither save him nor absolve her of misplaced guilt, and obsessing over it would only hurt her. Instead, it was the screaming of a little Queen that left her filled with doubt. It’s cries reached up the shaft and breached the barrier of their species, brought faint tears to her eyes as she climbed hand over hand, up and away.

She hated that. 

She _craved_ it.

A voice she _knew_ she could soothe, a hurt she _knew_ she could fix, a wrong that she could right.

She remembered a little girl she’d failed, and wondered for just a moment if this was just one long string of fuckups.

\---

Getting the _Betty_ far enough away to watch the explosion that Call had rigged was hard. There was a thin barrier where they would be safe enough to trigger it without dying in the resulting blast, and too much rode on them destroying it to fuck it up. They needed to accept the chance that they could die, or hope that no one ever found the _Auriga._ With that chance came the possibility that they would let a plague be unleashed across the galaxy, a blight that could never be controlled.

Ripley knew which camp she was in, no matter how much it hurt her to accept that.

Out in space the emptiness of it all began to pull them apart, the _Auriga_ drifting further back as Vriess rollicked in the pilots’ seat, Christie helping to patch Johner up on the floor beside him. Med supplies were in a pile, Call moving back and forth to gather more.

Only Ripley was left to watch, and she scowled at the expanding fireball. The nuclear blast was a brilliance unto itself, and the auto-shades engaged even from so far away. Her eyes took the brunt of the hit though, and for a moment she was blinded. Something burned within her, buried to rebuild itself, blinked back into existence within a second or two. The _It_ within her called out, mourning and cold, a stab of guilt worming between her chest with all the efficiency of an exploding drone.

Ripley laughed at herself, her situation, collapsed backwards into Call’s waiting arms and for once she wondered if this was what it was like to be safe.

\---

Safe was, unfortunately, quite relative.

To the thinned down crew of the _Betty,_ safety was the nearest station that wouldn’t ask too many questions and had liquor readily available.

For Call it was her chosen quarters, all of Hillard’s belongings - _or junk, as Ripley had called it, much to the amusement and begrudging agreement of Call_ \- tossed aside to be sorted through at a later date, everything they could sell separated before the next offload. The space became a haven to her, and except for the time she spent helping Vriess it became her hiding spot.

For Ripley, it was the catwalks and darkened hallways. The recreation area was Johner’s but he accepted her moving through it as a necessity rather than a hostile takeover. She moved everywhere it was dark and distant, places she could avoid the smell of humans and close her eyes in quietude. She wandered vents, empty hallways, moved quietly until she’d learned each and every creaking panel, all of the spots where loose metal would bang harshly against its neighbours. The _Betty_ wasn’t a nest, it wasn’t _home,_ but it was close enough for now.

Grooves against the walls and handholds marked her frequent passage, thin scratches that revealed where she travelled. If the others noticed the evidence and didn’t like it, they kept quiet. No one commented on her passage and no one stopped her.

They knew it was best to let the beast have it’s space to roam, lest they manage to piss her off and lose a hand, or a face.

Ripley agreed that it was the wisest choice.

\---

The tension stretched between them, taut and _thin,_ until one day it finally snapped.

Call had taken to avoiding her, just as she had since Ripley had fallen unconscious within her arms as they sped away from the ruins of the _Auriga._ She had kept her eyes down and presence low, hiding away in her bunk and avoiding - _thanks to the exceptional hearing that every auton was granted_ \- Ripley as she wandered around the ship. Except a faint smile exchanged whenever Ripley cracked a joke, dry and stinging, she was quiet.

Subdued.

And Ripley could feel that energy building up within her skin, a tingle of electricity that warmed whenever Call was near. It rose and rose, higher and higher, a strangling force much like a maelstrom within her chest. She fought herself for breath, wished the distance would close. She needed something.

Someone.

The dam was finally overrun when Call moved towards the back of the ship to fix a broken electrical panel, far from the others and lonely in its darkness. It was nearer where Ripley had settled, the ventilation and maintenance shafts hiding her sufficiently from the others whenever she needed time apart. It still wasn’t what she would call a nest, despite some broken portion of her biology telling her that she needed to find one. It was the closest thing, however, and she’d decided that for the moment it would do. It was warm, wet, and dark throughout.

But darkness wouldn’t help Call, and even with her night vision there were some things much easier to see in properly lit environments.

She apparently hadn’t anticipated that Ripley would be crouched there, staring down at her like she was some intruder from the vent beside Call’s head. The panel Call had needed to access was just below and to the right, and the shocked look on her face slowly returned to placid nothingness.

 _Nothingness_ was helping _no one._

“Call-”

Ripley closed her mouth when the woman beneath her startled, leaning back into the wall and crouching, her thin legs all caught up as she pushed herself to appear frail and diminutive. Call _wasn’t_ small - _except her height, and her personality had more than made up for that on the Auriga_ \- or anything so fragile that she needed to hide.

Not from Ripley.

“What’s wrong?”

Her words were clipped, and Ripley unspooled as she asked the question. Her bare feet - _boots being dropped back beside the cockpit chair, marked and tagged as a reminder to everyone aboard that if they touched them then they’d easily lose a limb_ \- pressed down against too hot metal, a clawed hand reaching out to Call. The auton continued to press herself back for a moment, her eyes filled with something foreign and confusing. 

But the strain broke.

Call caught herself and breathed, deep and heavy, and in that space of time Ripley pushed herself forward.

She loomed above Call, long and gangly, her arms out to the side and hands pressed flat to the wall of the vent on either side of Call’s head. She staid there and tapped her claws rhythmically against the metal for a second, and when she wasn’t pushed away or told off, or shoved aside for Call to make an escape, Ripley moved in.

Soft lips.

She didn’t know why she did it except that she wanted to, and she decided she could live with that.

A warm tongue.

Call ran at a higher temperature than anything human, and Ripley ran cold. The heat was a balm against her skin, her breath tasting of something vaguely fruity, vaguely artificial.

A hand shoved down between clothes, palms against hardened nipples, fingers sliding into a glistening slit. Minutes spent exploring one another in the darkness, in the faint flashes of light from Call’s dropped flashlight. Minutes turning to an hour, the explorations taking on a pointed aspect as each moved to complete the other, all the energy they’d spent _fighting_ now turned to _fucking._

Ripley hissed when she came, something rumbling and pleasant, and Call luxuriated beneath it.

\---

When they finally left the crawlspace the repair was complete, and Vriess’s compliments came in over the intercom, elated that it had even managed to be done. Call smiled at the praise, at the dripping heat falling down her skin, and the thin cuts upon her body began to heal. Her neck had been done in the worst, Ripley’s long fingers gaining a perfect hold, and for someone who didn’t need to breathe the pressure had been unbelievable. Without any words spoken, or any judgement by the crew they passed by, Ripley joined Call within her bunk.

Within the auton’s arms, completed and _buzzing_ with desire, she wondered - _hoped_ \- that this space would be enough for her nest, or whatever it was that the word was supposed to mean to her. 

With a bright smile, she moved to contemplate - _for the first time since she had been awoken from death_ \- and _believe_ that this place could be _safe._


End file.
